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Marcus: Justice fell short for Trayvon Martin

Did the system work? Was justice served? We like to think of those questions as identical. After all, the point of a criminal justice system is to dispense justice. But with the acquittal of George Zimmerman on charges of murdering Trayvon Martin, the system worked yet justice fell short.

Did the system work? Was justice served? We like to think of those questions as identical. After all, the point of a criminal justice system is to dispense justice. But with the acquittal of George Zimmerman on charges of murdering Trayvon Martin, the system worked yet justice fell short. This outcome is sad but healthy — sad because a 17-year-old boy is dead and his killer walks free; healthy because the verdict seems justified as a matter of law.

There is an important place for emotion in criminal proceedings, both for mercy and for outrage. But the system cannot function if it consistently elevates emotion over rules.

Both sides, naturally, see the Zimmerman verdict through the lens of their own preconceptions. "Old South justice," thundered Jesse Jackson.

This comparison is unfair. No doubt that race played a role in Martin's death. Zimmerman likely would not have called the police about a white teenager — even a white teenager wearing a hoodie — walking back from the 7-Eleven.

But there is no evidence that race played a role in Zimmerman's acquittal. If anything, the racial undertones worked against Zimmerman, increasing public pressure on prosecutors to bring the most serious and, in hindsight, difficult to support, charges against him.

The New South is not perfect, but it is not the Old.

The overreaction from the left is mirrored by the overreaction from the right, and without the excuse of being swept away by emotion over a child's unnecessary death. Conservative Roger L. Simon lamented on PJ Media that Zimmerman "will never live a normal life" and described the prosecution as "quite literally, the first American Stalinist 'show trial.'"

That is, quite literally, deranged. Of course no decent person responsible for killing an unarmed teenager could "live a normal life."

Zimmerman may not be legally responsible for Martin's death but he remains morally culpable.